• About
  • Photography

The Bully Pulpit

~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

The Bully Pulpit

Tag Archives: William Goffe

When Biographies Become Parables

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arctic Adventure, Charles I, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Whalley, Fiction, literature, M.M. Bakhtin, Parable, Paul Auster, Peter Freuchen, Sarah Winchester, Short Story, Story, The Locked Room, The New York Trilogy, The Pit and the Pendulum, William Goffe, Winchester Mystery House

POLARFORSKEREN OG FORFATTEREN PETER FREUCHEN MED SIN 2 KONE SKUESPILLER MAGDALENE VANG LAURIDSEN.

“I once knew a bum who spoke like a Shakespearean actor, a battered, middle-aged alcoholic with scabs on his face and rags for clothes, who slept on the street and begged money from me constantly. Yet he had once been the owner of an art gallery on Madison Avenue.

Think of what happens. Think of how lives burst apart. Goffe and Whalley, for example, two of the judges who condemned Charles I to death, came to Connecticut after the Restoration, and spent the rest of their lives in a cave. Or Mrs. Winchester, the widow of the rifle manufacturer, who feared that the ghosts of the people killed by her husband’s rifles were coming to take her soul – and therefore continually added rooms onto her house, creating a monstrous labyrinth of corridors and hideouts, so that she could sleep in a different room every night and thereby elude the ghosts, the irony being that during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 she was trapped in one of those rooms and nearly starved to death because she couldn’t be found by her servants. There is also M.M. Bakhtin, the Russian critic and literary philosopher. During the German invasion of Russia in World War II, he smoked the only copy of one of his manuscripts, a book-length study of German fiction that had taken him years to write. One by one, he took the pages of his manuscript and used the paper to roll his cigarettes, each day smoking a little more of the book until it was gone. These are true stories. They are also parables, perhaps, but they mean what they mean only because they are true.

In a book I once read by Peter Freuchen, the famous Arctic explorer describes being trapped by a blizzard in northern Greenland. Alone, his supplies dwindling, he decided to build an igloo and wait out the storm. Many days passed. Afraid, above all, that he would be attacked by wolves – for he heard them prowling hungrily on the roof of his igloo – he would periodically step outside and sing at the top of his lungs in order to frighten them away. But the wind was blowing fiercely, and no matter how hard he sang, the only thing he could hear was the wind. If this was a serious problem, however, the problem of the igloo itself was much greater. For Freuchen began to notice that the walls of his little shelter were gradually closing in on him. Because of the particular weather conditions outside, his breath was literally freezing to the walls, and with each breath the walls became that much thicker, the igloo became that much smaller, until eventually there was almost no room left for his body. It is surely a frightening thing, to imagine breathing yourself into a coffin of ice, and to my mind considerably more compelling than, say, The Pit and the Pendulum by Poe. For in this case it is the man himself who is the agent of his own destruction, and further, the instrument of that destruction is the very thing he needs to keep himself alive. For surely a man cannot live if he does not breathe. But at the same time, he will not live if he does breathe.”

__________

Excerpted from “The Locked Room” by Paul Auster, which you’ll find in his New York Trilogy. You can also read it in his Collected Prose, a volume that offers most of his best work, including his endlessly thought-provoking series “True Stories”.

Incredibly, each of these anecdotes is true. Goffe and Whalley really did flee from Parliament, eventually settling in a cave in Connecticut (fittingly christened “Judges Cave”). Sarah Winchester, the widow of rifleman William, really did build a seven-story “Mystery House” in San Jose, California, fitted with trap doors, fake staircases, and mirrored interior windows. Bakhtin actually smoked one of his manuscripts after his publishing house was bombed in the German invasion of Russia (the remnants of that, an analysis of Goethe, are called “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism”). And Freuchen, pictured above with his wife, really did nearly freeze himself into his own igloo while returning from an expedition to study the inuits.

Read on:

  • A wonderful, true 2-minute short study by Auster
  • From Max Beerbohm and Somerset Maugham: two ironic anecdotes about fate
  • Is a human life a narrative? Martin Amis and Julian Barnes answer

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Today’s Top Pages

  • "Provide, Provide" by Robert Frost
    "Provide, Provide" by Robert Frost
  • Einstein's Daily Routine
    Einstein's Daily Routine
  • Da Vinci's To-Do Lists
    Da Vinci's To-Do Lists
  • What Was the American Founders' View of Human Nature?
    What Was the American Founders' View of Human Nature?
  • "Going" by Philip Larkin
    "Going" by Philip Larkin

Enter your email address to follow The Bully Pulpit - you'll receive notifications of new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Recent Posts

  • The Other Side of Feynman
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald on Succeeding Early in Life
  • The Man Who Most Believed in Himself
  • What ’60s Colleges Did Right
  • Dostoyevsky’s Example of a Good Kid

Archives

  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (2)
  • February 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • November 2017 (3)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • September 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (2)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • February 2017 (1)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • December 2016 (2)
  • November 2016 (1)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (2)
  • February 2016 (1)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • November 2015 (8)
  • October 2015 (7)
  • September 2015 (11)
  • August 2015 (10)
  • July 2015 (7)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (7)
  • April 2015 (17)
  • March 2015 (23)
  • February 2015 (17)
  • January 2015 (22)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (17)
  • October 2014 (13)
  • September 2014 (9)
  • August 2014 (2)
  • July 2014 (1)
  • June 2014 (20)
  • May 2014 (17)
  • April 2014 (24)
  • March 2014 (19)
  • February 2014 (12)
  • January 2014 (21)
  • December 2013 (13)
  • November 2013 (15)
  • October 2013 (9)
  • September 2013 (10)
  • August 2013 (17)
  • July 2013 (28)
  • June 2013 (28)
  • May 2013 (23)
  • April 2013 (22)
  • March 2013 (12)
  • February 2013 (21)
  • January 2013 (21)
  • December 2012 (9)
  • November 2012 (18)
  • October 2012 (22)
  • September 2012 (28)

Categories

  • Biography (51)
  • Current Events (47)
  • Debate (7)
  • Essay (10)
  • Film (10)
  • Freedom (40)
  • History (122)
  • Humor (15)
  • Interview (71)
  • Journalism (16)
  • Literature (82)
  • Music (1)
  • Original (1)
  • Personal (3)
  • Philosophy (87)
  • Photography (4)
  • Poetry (114)
  • Political Philosophy (41)
  • Politics (108)
  • Psychology (35)
  • Religion (74)
  • Science (27)
  • Speeches (52)
  • Sports (12)
  • War (57)
  • Writing (11)

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    <span>%d</span> bloggers like this: